For an optical disk having high quality picture recorded thereon and a reproduction apparatus for such an optical disk, systems referred to as 480P and 720P for recording progressive data have conventionally been studied. A conventionally known reproduction control system for an optical disk uses one MPEG decoder.
First, a first problem of the conventional system will be described. When a conventional optical disk for high quality picture recording is reproduced by a standard reproduction apparatus, normal pictures cannot be output. The optical disk for high quality picture recording can only be reproduced by a high quality picture reproduction apparatus. Accordingly, there is a need to produce two types of optical disks having the same contents. In other words, the conventional optical disk for high quality picture recording is not compatible with a standard video reproduction apparatus. Next, objectives of the present invention will be described. A first objective of the present invention is for providing a optical disk for high quality picture recording compatible with the standard video reproduction apparatus and a reproduction system for such an optical disk.
The compatibility herein can be defined as the relationship between the conventional monaural records and stereo records. That is, a novel 3D optical disk or high resolution optical disk according to the present invention is output with a standard resolution by the existing reproduction apparatus for DVD or the like, and output with a high resolution by a novel reproduction apparatus according to the present invention.
Then, a second problem of the conventional system is regarding a reproduction control system. By the conventional reproduction control system, one stream is reproduced using one decoder. Accordingly, in order to connect two streams of a high resolution signal seamlessly, i.e., without stopping the movement of the video, a complicated system is required. A second objective of the present invention is for providing a reproduction control for connecting a plurality of streams seamlessly by a simple procedure.